Video Game / Puppeteer

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Not many people can perform a Yorrick soliloquy with their own head, but Kutaro is one of them.

"Welcome to the magical theatre, of the strange and fantastic..."

— Professor Gregorious T. Oswald

Puppeteer is a side-scrolling platformer for the PlayStation 3. Puppeteer takes place in a magical puppet theatre, owned and run by the slightly eccentric but thoroughly charming Professor Gregorious T. Oswald. His latest production is the weirdly titled “The Perilous Journey of a Boy Named Kutaro.”

On one dark, moonlit night, the star of the show, a young boy named Kutaro, is carried away by the maleficent Moon Bear King to a black castle, where the unlucky lad is transformed into a puppet. Kutaro then displeases the terrible tyrant, who duly devours the boy’s wooden head and casts away his body. But the headless hero is not alone, for he discovers a very special pair of magic scissors, which will help him on his harrowing quest to find his head -— and his way home.

Unlike most games where you move through the world, the world of Puppeteer actually moves around you, with all the action taking place on the same stage. The sets are continually moving and changing, taking you on an adventure with surprises in every scene.

Baleful Polymorph: Bugging the Witch during tutorial segments will make her turn the current companion into a creature or object related to the current events, such as turning Ying Yang into a carrot, or Pikarina into a parrot. The Witch herself is actually the Moon Goddess turned into an ugly form by the breaking of the White Moon Crystal.

The Chosen One: Subverted; Ezma went through a LOT of "chosen ones" until Kutaro happened to get past the staircase of violent death. It helps that he had the unique ability to get up to three health points (and regenerate these), but other than that he's just a normal kid.

Clockworks Area: The second half of Act 6: Curtain 2 takes place in a giant clock tower. Professor Gregorious even mentions how the gears make convenient footholds.

Colossus Climb: Inverted, the final boss against the Moon Bear King has you literally cut him down to size until he's just a head.

Constellations: The Moon Bear King in turn has Ursa Major as his theme. His original form, Little Bear, is Ursa Minor.

Killed Off for Real: All 12 of the generals are killed. General Rat gets strangled, General Dragon gets cut to pieces, General Monkey gets lost in space and so on and so on.

Possibly averted since every general is seen during the ending credits. Since every character is an actor, it's possible that their deaths were just for the story and not intended to be real. It's also possible that while the bosses fought may be dead, the child versions of them might have survived, since Little Bear lives while Moon Bear King dies. We just never actually see them.

In Act 4, Curtain 2, Kutaro and Pikarina discover a wanted poster for Kutaro with a lot of zeros on it. Pikarina says that Kutaro must be infamous, to which Kutaro responds by shooting red lighting out of Calibrus, evoking inFAMOUS.

Show Within a Show: The framing device for the game is a puppet show called "The Perilous Journey of a Boy Named Kutaro".

Soul Jar: Most of the enemies in the game, each of them housing souls the Moon Bear King is holding hostage.

Studio Audience: They'll cheer whenever Kutaro does something awesome, laugh at funny moments, gasp at suspense, and even begin chattering with each other if Kutaro remains idle for too long.

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